When silver halide color photographic materials are subjected to color development after exposure, developing agents such as aromatic primary amines react with dye-forming couplers to form color images. In this method, the color images are generally often reproduced by the subtractive color process, and for the purpose of reproducing blue, green and red colors, yellow, magenta and cyan color images complementary to the respective colors are formed.
As cyan color image forming couplers, phenols and naphthols are frequently used. However, cyan dyes obtained from the phenols and naphthols conventionally used have side absorption in blue and green regions. In particular, this is undesirable for the color reproduction of green, and it is therefore desired to improve this disadvantage.
On the other hand, as couplers in which heteroatoms are introduced into rings having eliminable groups, 3-hydroxypyridine and 2,6-dihydroxypyridine are only disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,293,004. The wavelength of an absorption obtained from 3-hydroxypyridine described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,293,004 is very short, and the absorption peak is also broad. Further, this 3-hydroxypyridine is water-soluble. For these reasons, 3-hydroxypyridine can not be used as the so-called cyan coupler.
On the other hand, 3-hydroxypyridine having an amido bond at the 2-position recently disclosed in European Patent 0,333,185 and JP-A-1-315736 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application") has a sharp absorption peak, and therefore an improvement in color reproduction is expected. However, its improvement effect is insufficient, and a coupler having a sharper wave form is desired under present conditions.